Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Your Inner Beauty - artistic layout

Hi all dear crafters.

Hope you are all having a wonderful day today.

Today I wish to share a layout I made this night when I ended up creating half the night instead of sleeping... ;O) Well, the thing is that I suddenly had this idea in my head, an "image" of a layout with one large butterfly wing, and just had to get started on it right away, and so I did. As a photo for this "different" layout I thought about some photos I took of my daughter recently where she posed in our bathtub with a few inches of water. It was in fact her idea to take pics of her when she was in there, and I actually liked how they came out! The photos looks different and very artistic, so I though one of them should probably work well to a layout as the one I now had in mind.

Well, I found the photo, I managed to get the butterfly wing I had in mind, and after some hours of creating, this is how the end result came out;

"Your Inner Beauty"

Above;"Your Inner Beauty" is a 12x12 layout in a "Artsy Romance Grunge-style" where I also used a artistic photo of my daughter. Used lots of different Prima flowers for the flower cluster and different mediums and techniques for the texture effects.
The layout is about my amazing daughter's inner beauty, her pure good soul, her honesty, her big heart and how she always cares about others. A beauty that I hope she will carry with her trough all her life.

I wish to share with you all some details about how I made this layout. However, I didn't take pics of the steps during the process, so all I can do is to share some tips and ideas which I used on this layout. So here are some close-ups and some images explaining a bit of what I did;

A bit about how it's made...

Before I started on the layout, my first step was to find out if I could get the butterfly wing I had in mind. Earlier I bought some butterfly images on Shutterstock.com, so I went trough my folder on my Mac and looked what I had. And I found exactly what I needed, an image with three butterflies in perfect color and design!

Left: This beautiful butterflies image bough at Shutterstock.com is the one I used to create the large wing on this layout.
I picked one butterfly, cut out the image in Photoshop, then started on the next steps in the planning process for this layout.

Above; The artistic looking photo of my daughter.
One day when she were in the bathtub she called me in and said "mum, look at me! Please take pictures of me now!", and she automatically started to pose. Well, she didn't had to ask me twice to go get my camera, and this is how one of the pictures I took came out.
This is the photo I chose to use and started to play with in Photoshop together with the butterfly wing.

Above: The black and white photo on the layouts is played with in Photoshop before printed.

Left: Here is the Post Card design brush I made in Photoshop and placed on to the photo before printing it.

Left; Here you can see the photo when the post card brush is placed on the photo in Photoshop. Before printing it I adjusted the effect of the brush on the center of her face so it wouldn't be too dominating.

I really think the design and lines on this brush did fit the face perfectly, and on an artistic layout as this I allow myself to play a bit extra with the photos as I did here.

Left: I don't have a certain way to start my creating process. It all depends on the project, and may vary from time to time. But I like to play around with the products in front of me to find a set-up and balance to go for.
But this time, since I didn't have the large butterfly wing physically in front of me, it was hard to plan the design in details.
To find out the size I wished to print the butterfly wing in to get the wished balance and design, I created a new file in Photoshop in 12x12 layout size (300 dpi, 12x12 inches).
Then I added the butterfly wing cut out and the photo and started to play around in Photoshop to find the setup and balance I had in mind. When I had this approximately as imagined, I could easily trough Photoshop print out the butterfly wing in the correct size on a white matte photo paper before cut it out with a "Comfort-Craft Tools craft knife". The same process were done with the photo after I had the brush on and effects as desired.
Here on this image you can see my very quick Photoshop draft that this time was from the very first steps in the creating process.

Above; The butterfly wing I only glued down on the center edge so the wings could fold up a bit and add dimensions to the layout. Underneath the wing I added a layer of IKEA lace curtains cut in the same shape as the wing.

Above: All the beautiful flowers mixed together are all from Prima. The textured background are made with a Prima mask, Claudine Hellmuth Gesso and different liquid mediums from Ranger and Tattered Angels etc. The white chair is a Shabby chic Resin Treasure "Allure".

Left: The wonderful Prima mask used for the texture background (above) together with different mediums.

I also wish to once again let you all know how much I appreciate all your wonderful comments! Even though I don't have much time to go blog jumping or leave comments anymore, I read every comment you leave and each one of them truly warms so much and inspire me to continue to do what I do. I do try now and then in-between to catch up and to visit you, and hopefully I will find more time for that soon in the near future!
Thank you so much every one of you, for your time to drop by and for your sweet words! *warms my heart*

Sometimes a very special vision of a scrapbook layout comes along....and the result is MAGICAL! your daughter obviously has inherited her mother's creative vision as well. A stunning and dramatic work of art! Bravo, Ingvild!

This LO is the most beautiful thing that I saw... it's PERFECT, each detail is so special! Your daughter is an angel, a she is a painting of Renaissance... it's incredible what you can do... it's maical... kisses with love, from Brazil!!!hera sugitani